Around a month ago I started experiencing pain in two fingers from my fretting hand after a long playing session. This has been on going since then. The pain comes from the joints.
I just went to the doctor and it doesn’t seem to be arthritis. She thinks they will heal with time and care, she gave me some exercises. She also recommended me asking other fellow guitarists and teachers about their experience with this.
Have any of you experienced some kind of pain like this and how have you dealt with it?
Hi Aram, I’ve experienced sometimes a little ailment in joints of fretting hand and I’ve solved incorporating more dynamic excercises to lubricate the joints in my stretches before playing.
Here’'s a routine I’ve found very useful:
I haven’t experienced any joint pain so I have little to offer aside from being sympathetic and supportive. I hope the exercises help and the pain goes away quickly.
Hi Aram, I experimented the same problems short after I start using Kiko’s method to play intense every day. My guess was that was just fatigue, so I starting to put more attention on my stretching and warm up before play, an started to do stretching also after play. Besides, when the pain was too intense I took a day to rest.
With time, the pain decreased (although it comes back when I play too much or skip stretching :p), so I can say you that, like any part of your body that you regular exercise, be careful, make right stretching and warm up, and “listen to your body” to rest if you need.
I fortunately didn’t experience pain from playing, but from intense works in the garden. The orthopedist just smiled and said that it is normal of the body to react to unknown/untrained situations. He x-rayed and everything was fine. The pain went away and never came back.
You should just carefully try to find out, why it’s just those fingers and check how you use them differently from the other fingers that don’t hurt! Warm up properly, relax, try to find the trigger that makes it worse!
And stay calm! The human body is flexible and takes a lot! I’m sure it is nothing serious!
You and probably squeezing too hard. I would take a week off then try lighter gauge strings, and even a lighter pick. Classical seated position might help as well. Try not to let your fingers touch the wood of the fretboard, the string only touches the fret. Think light touch and minimal pressure. Also, take breaks every 15 minutes or so. Listen to your body.
I’m a fairly new to guitar so I still remember my very early problems with using far too much pressure to fret notes. My fingers would be sore on the tips and the joints and my wrist was always sore.
The more I relaxed the less sore I was. If you’re having joint pain and it’s not arthritis, it’s likely too heavy of a grip on the neck and pressing too hard to fret the notes. Watch Kiko’s light touch lesson. It’s a great way to re-train yourself to play with the minimum amount of finger pressure. It helped me immensely.
Hi folks,
I know this post is a while ago but I have started to feel some soreness in my index finger, I am just wondering has anyone overcome this or has this become an issue? If you have overcome it, what did you use or how did you overcome it>
Any help would be appreciated as I am starting to worry about it.
I think some soreness is OK, afterall your pushing your body to do more than it is used to. But anything more than a little sore from fatigue can be cause for concern. I have this unfortunate tendency to overdo alternate and sweep picking training and strain my right hand/arm to the point where a light case of tennis and golf elbow becomes sharp pain in my whole lower arm. There is no other cure there then to rest it and take some NSAID to manage the pain and inflammation (NEVER practice after taking pain medication! You feel like all is well because of the drug, but you are not healed and only making things worse.). And when you feel like its OK, rest it at least one more week. I really sucks, gets me totally depressed, but I rather take 2-3 weeks of rest than 6 months… But it is entirely my own fault: I can feel when My hand is getting to its limit. That’s when I should rest, but instead I literally haze myself into keep doing it: "You can’t be this soft, your’re such a pusy " blablabla. I get my “prize” for it: really uncomfortable pain in my hands and no practice for about a month.
So in short: sorry but the only thing I know of is time and rest. And learn to read your body’s signals! It is really helpful if you can approximately gauge the severity of your situation and you can make a decision about resting or keeping up with playing based on that.
Thanks, Nexion218, this has helped. I’m feeling really bummed about it, I am playing for a long time and this is the first time it has happened. I have looked up lots of videos over the past few days and I have realised my left-hand positioning has not been great, plus I was not warming up and down properly. I actually hurt it while trying out two notes per string exercises and legato.
